Beautiful friendship
by bhut
Summary: Set between episodes 5x03 and 5x04, the beginning of friendship between Becker, Jess, and Emily Merchant...
1. Part 1

**A start of a beautiful friendship**

_Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™._

_Note: contains spoilers for the official series._

"So, glad to have you back, lady Emily," captain Becker said nonchalantly, as he helped the noblewoman from the past settle into her temporary quarters in the ARC. "How's the Victorian London?"

"The streets are stinking, the raptors are deadly, and the society is just as segregated as it was before," Emily replied. "Really, it's like I never left it."

"Right," Becker nodded thoughtfully. "I'm sorry to hear that your return was so lousy. Anyways, here it is same old, same old as well. Abby and Connor took Matt for a ride on a submarine-"

"Wait, what's a submarine?" Emily asked, curiously.

"It's a ship that swims underwater. It is shaped like a metal cigar, basically, and has been in use for most of the twentieth century, or at least its better part. Nowadays, they're powered by nuclear energy, and-"

"Becker, wait!" Emily said with an embarrassed smile. "I just wanted to cliff note version – is that correct?"

"Yes, I guess it is," Becker admitted. "So, glad to have you back in any case."

"And it's good to be back," Emily nodded. "I never realized it, but back in the nineteenth century? The hygiene's atrocious!" She paused and added. "And why are you being so nice to me, too? Not that I'm complaining, but-"

"But Matt, whom you expect to be nice, isn't here," Becker nodded. "Sorry about that: he's busy with Abby conspiring against Connor or vice versa."

Emily blinked. "What do you mean?" she asked, sounding more curious than concerned.

"Well..."

_Several weeks ago..._

"You went on a submarine ride and didn't even tell me?" Becker glared at Matt. "You told Jess, but you didn't tell me?"

"Sorry about that, mate," Matt looked away, looking genuinely apologetic for once. "It just sort of happened."

"That's because I still don't admit that your souped-up tasers are real guns?" Becker pressed on. "No offence, but what you did – it's just petty."

"Becker, that's unfair!" Abby spoke-up suddenly, appeared from behind Matt. "Matt just chaperoned Connor and I while we sealed the underwater anomaly into the late Jurassic-?"

Becker did not reply, he just gave her a look.

_Now..._

"And while Matt was briefing Lester about your return, Jess told me that Abby was nosing around Connor's new lab. Maybe she is just jealous about Connor's new assistant that Philip Burton gave to Connor alongside a new lab, but I do not know. Abby has been conspiring with Matt ever since the giant burrowing insects from the future incident, you know?"

"No, I didn't," Emily muttered, as she fingered the handles of her kukris. "Connor's with Philip and Abby's with Matt, and I admit I would rather not end up as a chess piece in a conflict between two powerful men, you know?"

"Neither would Jess, neither would I, for that matter," Becker nodded solemnly. "Does this mean that we have an agreement?"

"An agreement?" Emily looked cannily at the ARC's head of security for what?"

"For not being unwitting pawns," Becker said firmly. "Is that clear enough?"

"Yes," Emily nodded thoughtfully. "It's a deal."

"Yay!" Jess said as she bounced from around the corner in her usual manner. "We've made progress! This calls for a celebration!"

Becker just looked at her. "What?" Jess asked, restraining her enthusiasm – just a little. "It does!"

"Does that celebration include chocolate tarts?" Emily asked, eagerly: there had not been any back in the Victorian London.

"Yes!" Jess nodded enthusiastically, "it does! Becker?"

Outnumbered and outvoted, Becker just nodded in agreement. "Yay!" Jess all but bounced up and down. "Emily Merchant, this is a beginning of a really beautiful friendship!"

As all-but-bouncing Jess Parker dragged a bemused Emily Merchant along the ARC corridor, Becker walked behind them, wondering what he got himself into...

_TBC_


	2. Part 2

**Part 2**

_Disclaimer: see previous chapter._

The house was old, broken down, dilapidated. It was full of stuffed and moth-eaten animals, broken down furniture, rundown plumbing. It had been clearly uninhabited for many years by anything bigger than vermin – moths, bedbugs, cockroaches...

Now, however, this situation appeared to be changing, as the chromatic light of a time anomaly had filled one of the house's rooms with its unearthly white light, breaking up old shadows and creating new ones until the time anomaly had vanished as suddenly as it had come.

One shadow, however, had remained behind, and it was misshapen.

The car was long and relatively massive – a rather modern machine, designed rather for city streets than an all-terrain vehicle and it showed.

"Where the deuce did all of these roots and bumps come from?" captain Becker snarled angrily as he checked under the car's hood. "Every time we deal with a time anomaly someone from the City Hall calls us and makes a stink – do you think it is time for us to reciprocate and call them about the state of the local road instead?"

"No go, Becker," Jess's apologetic voice came over the comm.-link. "This is really the city's suburbs, not London proper. I'm rather certain that the City Hall will be able to weasel out of this."

"What if Lester will get involved?" Becker was not backing down. "He detests these calls as much as the rest of us, and he got the legal savvy to make it stick."

"I'll pass it _after_ the time anomaly is dealt with," Jess said firmly, "and there _was_ a time anomaly – it's closed now, but can you please check to see that there is nothing left over from it? Or someone else, for that matter?"

"Yes, Jess," Becker rolled his eyes and turned to face the other occupant of his car. "Lady Merchant, sorry about the bumpy ride."

"Please. After the rides in couches over some of my old streets? This was quite tolerable," Emily Merchant said with a small smile. "Our ancestors may have invented the wheel, but its perfection occurred only now."

"Glad that you feel this way," Becker said slowly (he had his own opinion of the wheeled vehicles – i.e. that they were inferior to tanks), "but that is beside the point. Your ladyship is ready to go in?"

Emily did her best to suppress a rather unlady-like snort. Around a century of time's worth has come and gone, but titles still mattered in the British society (poor James Lester, he struggled so hard to gain a knighthood, only to learn that it was going to Philip Burton instead), and an owner of one was treated differently from other people – in Emily's case with a certain respect, even by Matt.

Matt... Emily was truly happy to see Matt Anderson once again, but the news about his escalating confrontation with Philip Burton had soured that occasion somewhat. Born and raised in the Victorian era, Emily Merchant saw what happened when two powerful men would go against each other – what happened to those caught between them and to the opponents themselves. It was not pretty and it was not something that Emily wished on the ARC in total.

"Why cannot Matt and this Burton person co-operate or at least talk to each other openly?" she asked Jess after learning of this.

"It's a person thing," Jess confessed to the older woman. "Matt thinks that he's going to save humanity. Burton thinks that he is going to save humanity. Since they got two very different ideas about how humanity is to be saved, and each has a very different idea as to how to do it. How _can_ they get along, then?"

Emily had no answer, and neither did Jess or Becker. "Why are _you_ staying out of it?" Emily asked the soldier.

"My loyalty is to the queen and country – I'm reasonably sure that Burton's is not, and I'm not too sure about Anderson either," Becker said flatly. "Plus in lieu of recent events I don't either of them trusts me too, so here we are."

"Yes, here we are," Emily said sadly, when the time alarm had sounded. "I'm going with you!"

Becker, who had turned around to go to the car, did not even break stride. "Fair enough. Jess, contact the others – if you can. I am off to fix _this_ mess, alone or not."

This was then, now Emily and Becker stood in front of an old, albeit locked, wooden door, and Emily, for one, felt decisively anti-climatic, as she promptly told Becker.

"Well, I would rather have that than an apartment complex full of people," Becker confessed, "but I see your point as well. Jess, how's the back-up?"

"Not so good," Jess's voice was definitely displeased over the comm.-link. "Lately, everyone appears to be turning them off or jamming the signal or something. They may have reasons for doing that, certainly, but does that make my job easier? No, it does not!"

"I'm sorry to hear this, Jess," Emily said, sounding genuinely regretful, "but..."

"But?"

"But what can you tell us about this place?"

"Oh. Not too much," Jess sounded sheepish. "The records say that this is a private home, closed since sixties or seventies, uninhabited by anyone-"

Some noise came from the inside.

"Not anymore," Becker muttered into the comm.-link and kicked the door. The door promptly collapsed, as the thin wood that it was initially made out of, did not withstand the combined strengths of time and captain Becker. "Anyone?"

There was no sound in response to the collapsed door, but Becker and Emily saw a flicker of movement in the living room at the other end of the short corridor. "Right," Becker said, turning to Emily, "you got your EMP ready?"

"Oh, I don't have one," Emily said brightly, "I never got one issued. I still held on to my kukris, though!"

"Of course," Becker said flatly, "the ARC is a really civilian enterprise, all rules and regulations go out of the window. Let us go in. You'll get an EMP issued later."

"Great!" Emily said cheerfully, and the pair entered the house. This was almost the last action they undertook, for as they entered the room, the furniture was flung aside, and the head of the biggest snake that either Becker or Emily had ever seen (followed by the neck and the rest of the animal) came striking at them.

"Whoa!" military and survival instincts kicked in, and the pair jumped to the sides: Emily closer to a window, Becker further away from it. "What is that?"

"A snake?" Becker pointed out the obvious, as the mega reptile slowly shifted its position, now raising its neck and head above the two humans... almost to the very ceiling. It was of a monotone olive-brown colour with some darker spots upon it, except for the eyes, which were bright blue.

"I can see this for myself, captain!" Emily snapped angrily, even as the reptile appeared to be more focused on Becker than on her. "Though its eyes...I have my doubts about it!"

"...So do I," Becker sounded rather withdrawn, which, considering their circumstances, worried Emily even more. "The last time I saw something this shade of blue was on my last day of active duty, and-"

The snake began to undulate, shifting itself into strange poises and shapes (though its head was almost always in the middle), looking almost as if it was dancing. The remaining furniture – sofa, chairs, a small table – either was shifted away from its bulk, or was crushed by it into splinters. And Becker, who was looking right at the snake, appeared not to take it in stride, but to lose his composure, rapidly: he dropped the EMP and all but collapsed onto the floor, muttering some sort of nonsense, at least to Emily's ears.

And to Jess's, as the younger woman's voice came through Emily's comm.-link. "Emily? What is Becker's muttering about? What mates?" the young woman sounded frantic, but Emily, who saw that the great snake paused in its movements to launch another attack – one that Becker couldn't dodge – had other problems to take care of.

"Hey! You leave him alone!" she shouted at the reptile, as if the latter could understand English.

And maybe it did, as the snake shifted and struck at Emily before the woman could dodge it – but Becker, who apparently was less out of it than how it appeared, pushed Emily out of the way, jamming his EMP in the snake's jaws, even as it bit hard on the plastic, wood and metal.

The next moment the snake began to shake its neck and head, as Becker had jumped there, and held on for his dear life as if he was a mongoose... a comparison made even more apt by the relation of his size to the snake's.

"Emily? Help!" he managed to exhale as the snake did its best to bash him against the ceiling.

"On it!" Emily promptly replied as she grabbed her blades and jabbed them into the snake's spine. The reptile's hide and flesh were hard, but Emily's kukris were very good, and they sliced through the snake's vertebrae very easily.

Abruptly, the snake stopped bashing Becker and just dropped. Becker immediately released it – in vain, for the reptile immediately raised its head and neck and whirled, starring now at Emily, its throat inflating and deflating like a pair of bellows, and the gaze of its unnaturally blue eyes was hard.

Before Emily could do anything, even pull out her blades, "Excuse me," Becker said brightly, and jammed something into the reptile's jaws. Instinctively, the snake swallowed it, whatever that was, and Emily tacked Emily throwing her over the sofa, before the snake's throat burst.

"What was that?" Emily managed to wheeze – Becker had not been too gentle.

"A pellet grenade," Becker muttered in reply. "Supposed to stun, but it can kill in a pinch as well. And you're welcome."

Emily just grinned weakly in reply.

_TBC_


	3. Part 3

**Part 3**

_Disclaimer: see previous chapters._

"All hail the conquering heroes!" Jess said brightly, as Becker and Emily walked back into the ARC, looking rather worse for wear than before. Then Jess saw them better and sobered up somewhat: "How _are_ you feeling?"

"Jess, did I ever tell you about my dream of retiring, going to the States and becoming an alligator wrestler?" Becker said flatly.

"Um... no?" Jess said cautiously: somehow she just could not imagine Becker without the ARC or the ARC without Becker.

"That's because I _don't_ have that dream," Becker almost snapped. "Jess, I was almost tenderized by the mother of all snakes and that wasn't pleasant." He paused and added, almost as an afterthought: "Sorry about snapping at you, Jess, but I _am_ rather sore: can you tone your enthusiasm down a little?"

"Sorry," Jess wilted even more as she saw that Becker was walking more stiffly than usual not just because he was Becker. "Was it that bad?"

"We came to an abandoned house, we faced the mother of all snakes and we killed it," Emily shrugged. "It wasn't too bad and it wasn't too good. It just was."

"...Okay," Jess blinked. "The mother of all snakes? Really?"

"The clean-up team is bringing its remains back to the ARC even as we speak. I sincerely hope that Matt or Temple will put up a stink because I really want to confront them," Becker said bitterly. "We were just lucky that it was just one snake and not two or more, because we barely killed just this one."

"About that," Emily said, somewhat tensely, "what did happen to you once the snake began its contorting? You seemed to be almost breaking down!"

"There was something about its eyes..." Becker muttered quietly even as he sat down on a nearby chair, "that brought old memories... there were three of us – me, who was a sergeant back then, and two of my friends. They were corporals, but the military does not always stick to its rank and file, believe it or not. It was our last tour of duty, we were ambushed... I survived, they did not..."

"And the snake?"

"Seeing the snake, its' strange blue eyes... it reminded me of that day," Becker muttered despondedly. "I don't know how or why, it just did. After that... I got my captaincy and was implied that a transfer would be a good thing. I was something of a hero, I had options, and I chose the ARC."

"Um, yay?" Jess said in a somewhat uncertain voice as she sat down next to Becker. "You made the right choice, right?"

"I most sincerely hope so, because I shudder to think what the wrong choices would be like," Becker shrugged. "Anyways, where is everyone?"

"Lester's at a meeting and everyone else has basically ditched us, as I said earlier," Jess said crossly, before changing the topic abruptly: "Meat tart? I made them myself!"

Emily looked rather askance at the younger woman. Matt did tell her once upon a time that Jess Parker was very interested in Hilary Becker, but when Emily had left, their relationship was less existent than moreso. Now, it seemed, Jess was trying to change that status quo.

"Excuse me?" Becker said, sounding rather surprised. "What meat tarts got to do with the ARC?"

"Nothing," Jess shrugged, "I just thought that they would be a nice gesture after a hard day. Plus, Abby and Connor had liked them when I had made the tarts for them."

"Abby and Connor had been stuck with the dinosaurs for a year, eating roots and unsalted fish – they would like anything!" Becker shot back. "For example, going up and down on an emotional rollercoaster, having a midlife crisis before actually reaching that point in their lives!"

"And what that got to do with us?" Jess shot back.

"I don't know," Emily said mildly, "but should I leave you two to sort things out?"

"No, no, that's okay," Jess said quickly, apparently trying to remain a good hostess. "I was just trying to cheer you two up after your run-in with the monster snake or whatever."

"And we're grateful for that," Becker said, equally quickly. "So, Lady Emily, meat tart?"

Emily arched an eyebrow, wistfully. Apparently, while Abby and Connor loved fighting each other (hopefully not as some sort of strange foreplay) and she and Matt were going nowhere fast, Jess and Becker became adapted to one another already, and worked in tandem – a strange one, but still in tandem – well enough.

On the other hand, Emily Merchant was hungry, and did not want to be alone while Matt was somewhere else, doing manly things and not in a positive way. "Sure," she said brightly enough, "just not precisely here, right?"

"Of course not!"

/

Once again, the strange trio found themselves in the rather comfortable coffee corner, that Jess had set up (largely for herself or a small group of people) thought this time there wasn't any chocolate (whenever supplies got low, Jess hoarded it for herself), but there was plenty of hot food – quite welcome after the run-in with a hostile chronologically displaced creature.

"So what will be done to the remains of the animal?" Emily said mildly, as she tasted some soup (not some of Jess's best cooking, frankly).

"Abby or Matt will probably examine it, certainly," Jess nodded thoughtfully. "Maybe Connor, but Philip got him busy working with technology instead..."

"Matt and Abby will examine what?" the aforementioned Matt Anderson, followed by the equally aforementioned Abby Maitland, joined the comfortable dining scene. "And something smells good."

"Oh, Jess has cooked, for a change," Abby said, before realizing that her compliment was ambiguous. "I, uh, mean it in a good way?"

"Of course you do," Jess nodded, remembering Abby and Connor's gratitude while the two of them stayed at her place, "of course you do. So what's up?"

"We should be asking that," Matt said in his best 'alpha male' tone of voice. "What's with all the urgent messages you left us, apparently?"

"There was a creature incursion, lady Emily and I have dealt with it," Becker said matter-of-factly. "What's up with your spy games?"

Matt glared. "Now, Becker, see here-"

"Matt!" Emily was born a daughter of a rich and ambitious merchant and was a wife of an equally ambitious aristocrat for a better part of her life and it showed. "Behave yourself! I do not know how you plan to save the world, but if it gets overrun by giant snakes while you're chasing red herrings again, this just won't do!"

"Red herrings?" Abby turned to Matt, confused.

"Ethan Dombrowski," Emily turned to Abby. "Matt was sure that he was going to destroy humanity... but he did not. He just wanted to leave and go back through that time anomaly. He also wanted to feed me to that giant bird... but that is not the same as destroying the world, now is it? Matt, how do you know that this Philip man won't be just like Ethan – close, but no match?"

Before Matt could reply, Abby did:

"And when did he tell you?" she asked Emily, not jealous, but rather hurt. "He told me that it was a very big secret..."

"Right before I went home, because I was too distracting for him," Emily said with some bitterness in her voice.

"Ouch! Mate, telling that to your woman is just wrong!" Becker snorted.

"You shut up!" Matt snapped in a manner atypical for him.

"Make me!"

As Matt and Becker began to argue (in a rather childish way), Abby leaned towards Jess and Emily. "So, does it mean that you two are in on the conspiracy?" she asked them.

Emily and Jess exchanged looks. "But of course!" Jess said brightly. "I never participated in anything important before. I'm in."

"Me too," Emily said simply. "I'm in."

"Good!" Abby said with a clear relief. "Keeping secrets from Connor is bad enough, but to keep secrets from you too..."

As Jess began to assure Abby that they did not mind, and Matt continued to bicker with Becker, Emily leaned back, content. Her friends were together again – well, almost, since Connor was still missing, but that was fixable. After all, power-hungry men tend to come and go, but true friendship endures all troubles.

_End_


End file.
